Looming Civil War by Jason Phillips

Author:Jason Phillips
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 5.2 “The Seventh Regiment Marching down Broadway to Embark for the War,” Harper’s Weekly, May 4, 1861. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division.

When the Seventh arrived in Washington, DC, the city was unprepared to quarter them, so men camped in the House chamber of the Capitol. “We appeared with bayonets and bullets because of the bosh uttered on this floor,” Winthrop wrote. “Talk had made a miserable mess,” and the Seventh promised to fix things with their actions. Surveying the Capitol’s interior, Winthrop decided their first act should be “a little Vandalism.” The room belonged to a “bygone epoch” when the departed Slave Power ruled with its “flavor of the Southwestern steamboat saloon.” Winthrop judged the reign of planter aristocrats “an historic blank.” A younger generation had arrived to fill that void and fulfill the promise of the Revolution. Orlando Poe felt the same way. “Now is the time when we want young and active men.” Older men may be patriots “but after they have become loaded with years and honors, they become unfit for such an emergency as this.” When the Seventh received orders to be ready to march, the men anticipated their destination. “ ‘Harpers Ferry!’ says one, ‘Alexandria!’ shouts a second. ‘Richmond!’ only Richmond will content a third. And some could hardly be satisfied short of the hope of a breakfast in Montgomery.”37

In published dispatches Winthrop anticipated a short, romantic war, but his private correspondence predicted a long, terrible conflict. He told Atlantic Monthly readers that Confederates “have not faith enough in their cause to risk their lives for it, even behind a tree or from one of these thickets, choice spots for ambush.” With jaunty self-assurance, Winthrop described the Civil War as a half war and impatiently wondered if any blood would be shed. In private, he confessed, “I see no present end of this business. We must conquer the South. Afterward we must be prepared to do its polic[ing] on its own behalf, and in behalf of its black population, whom this war must, without precipitation, emancipate. We must hold the South as the metropolitan police holds New York. All this is inevitable.” No clearer vision of the war and reconstruction was uttered in 1861, but his public statements remained romantic. In May, he described camp life to the public “as brilliant as a permanent picnic.” That same month, he confessed to George Curtis, “I miss my Staten Island. War stirs the pulse, but it wounds a little all the time.” His frail health was not holding up in camp. In public, Winthrop marveled at the North’s rush to enlist and defend the Union, while Washington filled with uniforms of every hue. “It seemed as if all the able-bodied men in the country were moving,” Winthrop observed. In private he admitted that these amateurs needed seasoning before they could save the country. “They must ripen awhile, perhaps, before they are to be named quite soldiers. Ripening takes care of itself; and by the harvest-time they will be ready to be cut down.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.